Sedgwick County is looking to hire more people and buy equipment to help improve testing for the COVID-19 virus.

County manager Tom Stolz says it’s currently taking 5 to 7 days to get results because of lab capacity.  He said the county is working to hire more people to help take applicants for testing, but the county can’t control the length of time that labs are taking to report results.

Stolz said the county is looking to buy analyzers to add lab capacity to the health department, but because of demand, that equipment may not arrive until October or later.   He said the county is also evaluating three proposals from local vendors to provide greater testing capacity with a faster turnaround on results.  County commissioners will hear the results of that evaluation next week.

The county is only testing people with symptoms and people who work as first responders or health care professionals.   Appointments for testing can be made by calling the 211 information line.

The county has tested at least 58,709 people for COVID-19 since the pandemic began.    The county was reporting 2,817 active cases on Thursday, a decline of 48 cases.  One new death was reported to bring the county’s total to 44.    There have been 1,742 people who have recovered.

The total number of cases in the county has reached 4,603 since the pandemic began.